Darynda Jones - Second Grave on the Left

“Charley,” Dad said in warning, “what’s going on?”

Reyes raised a gloved hand to my face. The heat that emanated from him caressed me like hot silk. “Kill you?” he asked, his velvety voice winding its way to my core. “That would be like smothering the sun.”

I blinked in helplessness as Reyes turned and raised his blade, both hands on the hilt of the massive weapon. As he brought it down with a lightning-quick strike, I bolted through time, ducked under his arms, and covered his body with my own. The blade came to a stop millimeters from my spine.

He lifted it with a growl. “Move,” he said, his voice edged with a hard warning.

“No.” I couldn’t stop the evidence of emotion from bursting forth, from stinging my eyes. I ground my teeth as I lay on Reyes. Soaked with blood, his body was still like an inferno, hot, vital and alive. His heart beat underneath my palms. His pulse roared in my ears. “I’m not letting you do this.”

He took a menacing step forward and lowered his hood so I could see the hard lines of his face. “You don’t understand what will happen if they find me, if they take me.”

“I do understand,” I said, my voice pleading. “They’ll torture you. They’ll use the key to get onto this plane. But—”

“It’s not that simple.”

That was simple? “Then what? Just say it.”

He worked his jaw, reluctance radiating off him. Finally, he said, “I’m like you. I’m the key.”

“I know. I understand that.”

“No, you don’t.” He rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand. “Just like you’re the portal into heaven—” He dropped his head as though ashamed. “—I’m the portal out of hell. If they get ahold of me, legions will come through, and they will not have to piggyback to get onto this plane.”

I took a moment to absorb his meaning. It was hard to believe. We were so much more alike than I’d ever imagined. Both keys. Both portals. One to heaven and one to hell. Like a mirror.

“They would have direct access through me, just like the departed have direct access to heaven through you. And the first thing they’ll do is hunt you down. They’ll have a way out of hell, and with you, they’ll have a way into heaven. Now, move, or I’ll move you.”

He would do it, too. He would move me, throw me across the floor to get to his body. I felt such desperation when I looked up at him, such agony. So I raised my hand and spoke.

“Rey’aziel, te vincio .”

He stopped, his eyes widening in disbelief.

“That’s right,” I said when he gazed at me in question, “I bind you.”

He stepped back, the shock plain on his face. “No,” he said, grabbing at his robe as it disintegrated around him. His blade fell and seemed to shatter and disappear when it hit the floor, and he looked back at me, his eyes pleading. “Dutch, no.”

The guilt that stabbed through my heart felt a hundred times worse than anything he could have done to me with his sword. The accusing stare, the betrayal in his eyes. Then he was gone. In an instant, his corporeal body came to life with a loud gasp. He seemed to seize, his teeth welded together as he writhed in pain, the agony on his face so evident, so absolute.

“Uncle Bob!” I screamed, and he and Dad barreled toward me. “Please, help him.”

They loaded Reyes into the back of an ambulance. He’d already been fitted with oxygen and an IV. His steely body looked so vulnerable, so childlike. I wanted nothing more than to wrap him in my arms and make everything bad that had ever happened to him go away. But that would involve the magic of fairy tales. Even with my abilities, or possibly in spite of them, the last thing I believed in was magic.

Uncle Bob, Dad, and I had rehearsed our story before the ambulance arrived. The three of us had been heading to my apartment, so the story went, for some paperwork on a case when I heard a sound in the basement. We found Reyes there unconscious and called an ambulance. It sounded good if one didn’t look too close. But after I’d told it about twenty thousand times, it got kind of old.

I sat in the waiting room at the hospital, still wrapped in my dad’s jacket to cover my blood-soaked clothes and hoping for word on Reyes’s condition as another doctor drilled me with questions. “Look, that’s all I know. I have no idea how he was injured or what happened, and I’m sorry some of the injuries look days old. I just found him like that.”

Neil Gossett, after dismissing the physician with a scowl, sat down next to me, two coffees in hand.

“Thanks for that,” I said.

“Where’s your uncle?”

“He had to go back to the station. We just solved a pretty big case, and he’s taking statements.” He was also going to let Cookie know what happened. She’d be glad we found Reyes.

“Well,” Neil said, handing me a cup and frowning at the blood still on my hands, “the way I see it, Reyes woke up in that long-term-care unit with amnesia. He was in a coma, after all, with a head wound. Didn’t know who he was, much less where he was. Can’t possibly be held accountable for escaping when he had no idea he was doing it.”

I gaped at him. With a grin, he reached over and closed my mouth.

“You would do that?” I asked, appreciation evident in my voice.

“I would do that.”

I sighed a breath of relief. “Neil, thank you so much.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, taking a sip. “No, really, don’t mention it. I like my job.”

I smiled. “Oh, hell yeah. Now I have something to blackmail you with. Hmmm,” I said, taking a long sip of hot java, “what do I need?”

“Your head examined?” he asked. “Which, by the way, you don’t have to resort to blackmail to get. I know some people who know some people.”

“If I want my head shrunk, I’ll talk to my sister.”

“Oh, dude, your sister is so hot.” He sat back, his expression full of reminiscent thought.

“Ew.” She was beautiful, but still. Neil Gossett? With my flesh and blood? Not likely. “I have to tell you something.”

He straightened. “Sounds serious.”

“It is. I bound him.”

“What?”

With a heavy sigh, I said, “I bound him, like tied him.”

He leaned toward me and asked under his breath, “Should you be telling me this?”

“Not like that.” After a backhand to his shoulder, I lowered my eyes, ashamed at what I was about to tell him. “I bound his incorporeal self to his corporeal body. He can’t leave it. He’s bound to it.”

“You can do that?”

“Apparently. It just kind of came to me.”

“Wow.”

“No, what I mean is, he’s mad.”

He paused and leveled an astonished stare on me. “What?”

“He’s kind of furious,” I said, shrugging one corner of my mouth.

Neil worked his jaw a moment, as if trying to figure out what to say. “Charley,” he said, apparently decided, “I’ve seen Reyes furious once, remember? It left an impression.”

“I know and I’m sorry. He was going to essentially commit suicide. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“So you infuriate him then send him back to prison?” he asked, his voice a harsh whisper.

I cringed. He made it sound so bad. “Pretty much.”

“Holy shit, Charley.”

“What’d she do now?”

We both looked up. Owen Vaughn, the guy who tried to maim me in high school, stood over us in his black police uniform. Shiny badge and all.

“Vaughn,” Neil said by way of a chilly greeting.

Owen tapped his badge. “Officer Vaughn,” he corrected. “I need to know what happened in that basement.”

Oh, for the love of Pete’s Dragon. “I gave my statement to Detective Davidson,” I said, challenging him with my eyes.